Monday, December 27, 2010

Natalie Portman was born Natalie Hershlag 9 June 1981. She is an Israeli American actress. Her first role was as an orphan taken in by an assassin in 1994 French action film Léon. During the 1990s, Portman had roles in major films like Beautiful Girls, anywhere but here, before they vote for her role as Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy.

Portman parents met at a Jewish student center at Ohio State University, where her mother sold tickets. They corresponded after her father returned to Israel and was married when her mother visited a few years later. In 1984, when Portman was three years old, the family moved to the U.S., where her father received his medical education. The family first lived in Washington, DC, where Portman attended Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, but moved to Connecticut in 1988 and later settled in Long Island, New York, 1990.

Portman took graduate courses at Hebrew University in Jerusalem in spring 2004. In March 2006 she appeared as a guest lecturer at a Columbia University course in terrorism and counterterrorism, where she talked about her film V for Vendetta.